UPDATE: Yasha was finally freed on bail just a few minutes ago, after two nights in jail, He just told me he’s exhausted and yet still quite shocked by how harshly the protesters were treated after the embedded reporters were out of the scene. Yasha will write up more as soon as he’s back home and able to focus again.

Exiled editor Yasha Levine was arrested late last night during the savage and unconstitutional police crackdown on Occupy LA. We call on the police and authorities to release Yasha, and release all protesters and media illegally arrested at the Occupy LA encampment and illegally imprisoned merely for exercising constitutionally-guaranteed rights. (Update: Latest word is that Yasha is going to have to spend another night in the Los Angeles County jail, and will be brought before a judge tomorrow and hopefully released, as bail is currently set at an incredible $5,000. The National Lawyer’s Guild is calling this illegal and a violation of state law. Updates below.)

The irony of the LAPD arresting Yasha Levine–a political refugee from Soviet totalitarianism– for the crime of reporting on a demonstration against oligarchy power, a demonstration protected by the Constitution, reveals again just how depraved and corrupted America has become.

Yasha Levine emigrated from Soviet Russia to the United States just over two decades ago with his parents and siblings–they came here as political refugees from the Soviet Union police state, where political dissent and critical journalism were not tolerated. And now he’s sitting in a Los Angeles prison for the same crime he’d have been imprisoned for back in the Soviet Union.

Now Yasha is in jail. As soon as he is out and rested up, we will let you know. In the meantime, thank you for supporting The eXile over these past few years. We might need to hit you up for bail funds or legal help.

One last thing: Since returning to America, Yasha and I have both been amazed and appalled by the similarities between America–essentially taken over by an oligarchy over the past decade– and Russia, whose nascent democracy was overthrown and replaced by an oligarchy in the mid-1990s. Russia’s oligarchical coup against democracy couldn’t have happened without the help of many of the same actors who are destroying our country today (Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, free-market ideologues advancing financial and corporate interests over democratic interests, international lending institutions, all validated and glorified thanks to the craven, corrupt suck-ups dominating the Western media).

At The eXile, just a few months before the Kremlin shut us down.

The oligarchy that rules America and usurped its institutions is showing its true character more and more now that the 99-Percent is starting to stand up: What we’re seeing behind the institutional facade is a violent, reckless, and anti-American ruling power–oligarchy. And like oligarchies everywhere, they despise America’s 99-Percent as little more aborigines to be looted, the natural enemies of the oligarchy’s interests. Our Constitution is explicit about what the purpose of our government is: “to promote the General Welfare…and to create a more Perfect Union.” This oligarchy is anti-Constitutional, and anti-American.

In their war against America, the oligarchy is behaving more and more erratically and foolishly, radicalizing greater numbers of Americans against them. It’s an old script that’s been played out before, and it leads to only one conclusion: The collapse of the oligarchy.

UPDATE: Speaking of a collaborationist bootlicking media there’s been an avalanche of PR-managed horseshit about the LAPD attack on the Occupy LA camp making it seem as though “this time it was different” and the police behaved themselves as tenderly as a bunch of Girl Scouts. Just in case you bought it, here are a few things to keep in mind as the truth trickles out:

LAPD too violent, some Occupy L.A. protesters allege [Updated]

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Los Angeles police are being praised for their planning, outreach and judicious use of force in ousting the Occupy L.A. encampment Wednesday morning, but a few protesters are reporting more physical confrontations with some of the 1,400 officers.

In a KCAL 9 video, now posted on YouTube, Tyson Heder, 35, was taking pictures of the eviction, when a police officer shoved him away. The video showed Heder then standing up, yelling at the officer, then being forced to the ground by several policemen.

His sister, Christy Collins, said Heder was in custody Wednesday morning.

Collins, who lives in Albany, N.Y., said she got an emotional phone message from him some time after his arrest. He posted on Facebook, “They beat me and stole my camera.” Collin said her brother had not been an Occupy participant previously and apparently went to the encampment Tuesday night just to take pictures.

“I do think it was horrible and excessive,” Collins said after watching a video of the encounter. “But I have to say, I was relieved it wasn’t worse once I saw it.”

* The video showing this fascist police attack on Tyson Heder has been pulled from sites all over the internet. Guess they don’t want the public to see the truth and fuck with their sleazy PR campaign. Anyone who has a YouTube copy please send the link.

UPDATED #2: COMMENTER SENT US THE URL AND CODE FOR THE VIDEO OF THE VIOLENT POLICE ATTACK ON TYSON HEDER (THANKS!):

* Why does the public know so little? Because just as with the invasion of Iraq (or Putin’s re-invasion of Chechnya), the media was brought into a collaborationist press pool and tightly managed. Even the normally loathsome Atlantic Monthly reports:

Media Choreography and the Occupy LA Raid

During the Los Angeles Police Department’s forcible removal of the Occupy LA protest last night, they chose12 reporters and photographers to represent the media as a whole.* This is called a “media pool” — and it used to be a fairly time-honored, if oft-derided, way of dealing with very specific types of situations. The original idea was that a select group of mainstream media journalists go into a military engagement, report their observations to a larger group, and then everyone could write from the same observed facts.

Growing beyond its military borders, the media pool concept has been deployed during political conventions, high-profile trials, and in a few other cases. In all cases, though, as summarized in the Encyclopedia of Television, the pool “offers those who employ it a way to manage media coverage.”

It strikes me as significant that the compromise developed in the 1980s after the media was barred from covering the invasion of Grenada. It also strikes me as significant that we use the term “compromise” to describe it. The first and second meanings of compromised come into play: “to settle a dispute by mutual concession” and “to weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable.”

All of that brings us to last night’s media pool. The LAPD deployed this old-school method in a decidedly 20th-century way. First, they didn’t select a single web-based publication or alternative news outlet. Instead they allowed the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, the big four television outlets, and a two radio reporters. Anybody not in that group — which would include reporters for every website not affiliated with a newspaper in Los Angeles, not to mention all citizens performing acts of journalism — were told that they would be arrested if they came too close to the eviction area.

The LAPD forbade their pool reporters from reporting the events live. (Update: See bottom of the post for details. The restriction was more akin to a kind of tape-delay than an embargo.) This helped to neutralize a key informational advantage that Occupy protesters have exploited. As confrontations with police begin, they are able to use the emotional imagery from those events to draw more support in real-time. Of course, in this case, there were some people writing about the events in real-time and others livestreamed, but only if they were willing to risk arrest.

58 Comments

Yo I was there last night, I managed to escape the cops, Yasha should have run faster!

But really, I heard that they’re setting bail at $5000, that sucks man

2. John Drinkwater | November 30th, 2011 at 7:04 pm

So much for non-violent protest…Because as soon as MLK went through this, what he should have done immediately was turn to violence. Worked great for the Black Panthers!

3. g | November 30th, 2011 at 7:13 pm

We’ll snatch him back and we’ll tear them down

4. adad | November 30th, 2011 at 7:37 pm

/red salute. Nice to see a journalist with some integrity. I’ll be in jail myself when the G8/NATO summit comes to the Chi this spring.

5. crazy_inventor | November 30th, 2011 at 7:37 pm

I converted this quote to speech and have been airing it in heavy rotation:

“American leaders appear to be following the Soviet playbook for the imperial end-game quite faithfully: cringing behind high walls and locked doors, looting the treasury like there’s no tomorrow, and, of course, lying their heads off. There are a few moments each century when status quo suddenly becomes status quo ante. We may be living through just such a moment now.” Dmitry Orlov

A weird message about “the county commissioners’ virtual jobs plan” just came over a streaming Albemarle, NC AM station during halftime, encouraging listeners to go to this site to learn how to “put more messages like this on the air.”

That is one slick website. Localized conservative astroturfing in North Carolina? That’s definitely one of the Kochs by way of Art Pope. I’m not sure if it’s new, but it looks to be a big player for Pope in 2012.

7. John Drinkwater | November 30th, 2011 at 7:54 pm

I find it intriguing that a site that realizes how evil and corrupt the US government is still thinks that ‘reforms’ achieved through non-violent actions are the way to go in order to make significant changes. MLK’s main concerns were inequality and yet inequality is worse now than it’s ever been in America. I can’t believe Ames still thinks that working within the system is the only way to go. We need to create political spaces that function both outside and against the state. We need to organize to overthrow the state and replace it with a society where people run their own lives in a coordinated series of communes and collectives.

We need, essentially, to be crude ham-fisted dumbfucks who have no clue about the power we could take and think that by watching Fight Club we could do what the Shay’s Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion, the entire fucking Confederate Army, the Black Panthers, Anarchists, Communists, America Firsters, SLA, Weather Undergound and the rest failed to do–but that said, you should definitely follow a blog commenter into violence, because this time, it’s guaranteed to work!

“It’s an old script that’s been played out before, and it leads to only one conclusion: The collapse of the oligarchy.”

So when’s Russia’s oligarchy going to collapse again?

Marx was wrong: history is not a predictable path, and sometimes the bad guys win.

11. John Drinkwater | November 30th, 2011 at 8:18 pm

So John Brown’s violent rebellion against slavery, detailed so well by Ames and shown in Ames’ book Going Postal to have been a complete farce of a disaster (the only person Brown managed to kill was a freed African-American), doesn’t prove my point at all because a) John Brown’s rebellion was a failure, and b) I’ve been talking about a revolution to overthrow the American government, whereas John Brown’s failed attack didn’t overthrow a government, it actually helped create the Confederacy, which failed and collapsed, and ultimately saved the Union. So John Brown rebelled against rebellion. What was my point again? Dang!

Haven’t you ever read Rosa Luxembourg, Reform or Revolution? For fuck’s sake man, you’re disappointing me. Sit ins and non violence are effective to an extent, but there’s only one way to change things ultimately: by force. Which has been proven by the Black Panthers, Communists, Trotskyites, Weather Underground, Anarchists, Confederates and scores of others to really work wonders here in the USA.

Oh, and when I write something not-retarded, I hope you’ll take me more seriously.

12. Non-violence is best, but... | November 30th, 2011 at 8:38 pm

I can’t understand why Occupy wastes its time butting heads with cops over public space. If they would occupy the lavish homes and gardens of the top 1%, then I’d join ’em!

Hey, if you’re going to get arrested anyway, why not enjoy a luxurious penthouse or mansion instead of lying in the dirt in some run-down park? I bet a couple hundred protestors could swarm into the home of some oligarch before anyone knew what the hell was going on.

What would they do about it? The press coverage would come across as much less sympathetic when kids are being hauled off an overly-manicured lawn rather than taken out of a public space. Or would the oligarchs use hired goons to evict ’em instead? That’d be a dangerous game to play in the U.S. of A. Lots of those cops are union guys, and might not take too kindly to some scabs taking over their gig.

I’m feeling like raiding the fridge for some caviar. Please explain to me why this idea would be worse than getting the shit kicked out of oneself on the street. I wanna get the shit kicked out of me on a nice hardwood floor, maybe leave some blood on that old persian rug over there.

13. John Drinkwater | November 30th, 2011 at 8:53 pm

So I just got my troll ass handed to me by Ames and I was going to completely misrepresent what he wrote but thankfully the Almighty Exiled Censor has decided that the best way to improve me is the old “silence is best”. Paul is dead, miss him miss him miss him

14. John Drinkwater | November 30th, 2011 at 9:05 pm

I’m pathetic

15. Fischbyne | November 30th, 2011 at 9:12 pm

Withdrawal. Ouch.

16. helplesscase | November 30th, 2011 at 9:13 pm

Free Yasha!!! Fuck this media black-out failed-state bullshit.

17. jonnym | November 30th, 2011 at 9:42 pm

@12, you seem to have missed the part where Occupation protestors are not butting heads with the cops at all. I have yet to see an instance of violence that was not started by police. I haven’t seen any indication that the protestors started any fights, or that they even responded with violence when provoked.

You’ve also underestimated America’s tendency to sympathize with the upper classes. If a bunch of kids occupy a mansion and get hauled out, Joe Average will probably watch the news footage and go, “Good! If it was *my* mansion, I’d want ’em out too.” That it would probably never be their mansion because the game is rigged against them just doesn’t enter into the equation. So your tactic would just create sympathy for the rich. But hey, at least you aren’t as dumb as John Drinkwater.

18. my talkative ringpiece | November 30th, 2011 at 9:48 pm

When they start beating up reporters, that’s when it starts. When they start jailing and “disappearing” reporters, that’s when it’s really bad.

Levine already had my respect for actually going out and *living* in Victorville.

$5000 bail means he should need $500 for a bond, is there some nice and anonymous way for 500 of us out here to donate a buck?

EXILED CENSOR RESPONDS: Thanks for the offer–we’ll find out tomorrow what the real damage is, Yasha is spending another night in jail hoping to avoid bail bond fees and the like.

19. matt | November 30th, 2011 at 10:00 pm

So it begins.

20. adad | November 30th, 2011 at 10:04 pm

@john you’re pretty much right, the Occupy movement isn’t that radical as a movement, and the focus on “LOOKIT THIS HYPOCRISY they don’t care about the first amendment, the police are jailing us helpppp!!!” is inane. [i say this as someone who’s been arrested and jailed many times, or at least I sound like i have been but actually haven’t] but look at it this way: maybe exercising a little radical individuality is a good thing? maybe getting your knee cracked by a pig is a positive life experience? i mean, it didn’t hurt liminov. we need a plan (eventually) but we also need a little danger now, especially while The Market is a rattled. the capitalists have always dug in deeper and found some new vault for their moneybags but this time they seem complacent, hesitant.

21. korman643 | November 30th, 2011 at 10:34 pm

Same as @18…

22. hazey | November 30th, 2011 at 11:12 pm

Y’all know us hippies are gonna try and shut the west coast ports down on December 12th, right? True we have been planning this for about 3 weeks now, and it pre-dates this last round of evictions, but that just gives us fire in a belly to do this damn thing. It might not be as sexy as occupying a Hollywood hills mansion, or as bat shit crazy as trying to enter into armed conflict with the state, but it should beat camping in a park in the dead of winter.

He probably won’t have to make bail at all if he’s willing to wait in custody until he sees a judge. Watch, I betcha next summer we see actions where the protesters actually seek to clog the jails with aggressively waves of arrested humanity. As it stands, too many of the people getting arrested are so eager to be free that they’ll slide 5 bills to a bondsman, if only to get the fuck away from the state’s clutches. That can be improved on.

Next summer’s gonna rock…

24. helplesscase | November 30th, 2011 at 11:33 pm

I’ll throw down for some bail money if need be (not much–I’m broke and don’t work). Also, John: who do *you* work for, man?

25. Kyle | December 1st, 2011 at 2:27 am

Who owns the buildings in downtown LA by the Occupy sites, and, indeed, in cities across the country?

#13 Fully agree! The Almighty Exiled Censor is the best thing that ever happened to the internet: whenever you are spouting bullshit, he saves you from embarrassing yourself.

If you donate, you are afforded the Exiled Premium SIC Service: Mark Ames comes to your house and beat the shit out of you if you give him lip.

27. Bane | December 1st, 2011 at 3:52 am

It’s Yashas fault. Whatever country he goes, he turns government into crap. He should not let roam the planet freely!

28. John Figler | December 1st, 2011 at 5:07 am

He had it coming. And he knew. How do I know he knew? Because I know so. I’m completely above any of this “civil disobedience” or “joining with other protesters” because I’m above all this. And too cool. And jaded. And a troll.

29. wing | December 1st, 2011 at 5:33 am

Why did he go there? No really, why would a journalist who’s been critically writing about the oligarchy takeover in America do something as weird and stupid as actually go to an Occupy protest when the cops are coming? He could have done what I did and anonymously troll other braver people’s lives.

30. Balloonable Bastard | December 1st, 2011 at 5:40 am

Drinkwater: You don’t need violence, doofus. Here’s a neater idea: start by voting with your wallet. Do not underestimate the impact this one judicious act can have on the TPTB. People vote against their own intrests every goddamn day…and mostly out of convenience.

For instance, I was amazed to read the other day that only now are folks starting to seriously consider taking their money out of major banks. Wha?!!! Talk about a delayed reaction. Transferring your lucre to a credit union or small local bank on an individual basis might not seem like much more than a gesture; but combined with a little communal solidarity (gasp!) it’ll pack a hell of a lot more sting than any lame quasi seditious act.

Speaking of voting with your wallet and communal solidarity… if Levine’s still in the clink by this evening, there needs to be a Free Yasha Pledge Drive. I cast my vote earlier this AM with a small pledge (it’s rent day!)

31. pearl fiddler queen | December 1st, 2011 at 6:15 am

same as @18

32. Erik Victory | December 1st, 2011 at 6:43 am

Good luck Yasha, you guys are the shit.

33. John | December 1st, 2011 at 6:56 am

After reading his recent attack on people who get pensions from the UC System, I’m actually glad this madman is off the streets!

That was a sardonic joke. In reality, I wish him well, and I’m tired of the police acting as the paid stooges of the one percent.

But, really, Yasha, getting back to your recent attack on the UC pension system, which, miraculously, is one the few remaining good systems of those set up in the mid-tentieth century U.S. only to face dismantlement in the last few decades, why would you seek to pit pensioners against students? It is true that the people at the top of UC get outrageous salaries and benefits–that’s one reason that it’s so easy for them to beat and use chemical weapons on students–but for every person in the UC pension system that gets some outrageous sum of money, there are literally thousands who get very modest pensions. Like me.

The goal should be that EVERYONE get a decent pension, not that those who have one be deprived of it.

34. calripson | December 1st, 2011 at 7:10 am

Ha, ha, ha ….you’re shameless Ames…Yasha a victim of “Soviet totalitarianism ?? Yes, the great sausage emigration wave, where if your name happened to be Levine, you got your lottery ticket punched thanks to the strength of the American Jewish lobby. Because we all know how great Jews had it in the Soviet Union. Now America 2011, that is real totalitarianism,executed in an efficient,post modern Anglo-saxon way.

35. Dammerung | December 1st, 2011 at 8:36 am

The USSRification is complete. $5000, really? Holy goddamn.

36. hazey | December 1st, 2011 at 9:24 am

Do we need to make plans to smuggle Levine’s Prison Notebooks out of the country?

37. jimmythehyena | December 1st, 2011 at 9:48 am

What this movement needs is a Boston massacre. Not like I’m hoping for the protesters to get hurt but it would really make people start taking what’s happening seriously. And it might very well happen give the number of right wing nut cases running around.

38. mirroring | December 1st, 2011 at 10:10 am

Can’t believe they’re jailing journalists now. Actually, I can…it’s still outrageous. Count me in if there is a FreeYasha pledge drive.

(Will consider withdrawing my pledge if one of these masochistic Koch-trolls agrees to let Ames go to their home and beat the shit out of them. How about it? Which one of you scum is willing to take a savage beating to help keep a lefty journalist in jail? You know you want it.)

39. Vendetta | December 1st, 2011 at 10:32 am

As a wannabe revolutionary with the thought capacity of a rock that got dropped in its head as a baby, I will pre-empt Ames by saying we should launch the armed rebellion now, because it will be retarded and destroy our cause.

Yet another pathetic commenter who’s never done jack fucking shit and thinks he knows what the fuck happened from his little bedroom. I, Petkov, actually have no fucking idea what happened.

42. HamsterFist | December 1st, 2011 at 12:04 pm

Was the French revolution violent? How about the American one? Bolshevik? Hell Gandhi even threatened violence and MLK started to come over to Malcolm X’s side….

But and this is a huge but, Americans will never tolerate any violence, currently. The Occupy movement would lose mainstream support and all hope lost. No, right now is the time for creatively getting our asses kicked and arrested, make people realize ‘they’ are coming for them and all their money next.

Not to say there won’t be eventual violence, as of course there will be, just the same as some German’s resisted the Nazi regime. The real violence will come from the world as soon as America loses WWIII and its empire.

43. DrunktankDan | December 1st, 2011 at 12:32 pm

Ah fuck, just when I get back from Vegas Yasha has to get locked up and the exiled needs money. Guess I’ll harvest the garden early.

When you guys have a hard number for the damage let us know. You got a lot of fans out here in internet land. . .

44. DrunktankDan | December 1st, 2011 at 12:40 pm

In the meantime I guess we should just spread the word? Do you guys need people with law degrees and that sort of thing? Fuck, I can drive down to LA right now to help out. I gotta do some business down there anyway.

45. jimmythehyena | December 1st, 2011 at 2:17 pm

What they need is lawyers, because any group corporate, organized crime etc. has legal help that they can already call upon when they have trouble. My fathers cousin was a doctoral candidat in at the university of Chicago but they rejected his thesis because it was to critical of the way the markets are manipulated he moved to New York and became a finacial advisor for the Gambino family until big Paul got hit. If I had been the least bit clever I would have studied accounting at CUNY but I was stupid and opted for classical languages and other useless stuff. Magni tumultus eo tempore in urbe erant.

Mr. Levine, please don’t give those fucking swine any of your money if you don’t have to. And if you are charged with anything, demand a trial by jury, and use the court procession as your soapbox to read your case against America’s ruling oligarchy into the public record!

And if you’re sent to prison, we can smuggle you in drugs and out handwritten exiled articles. Jail’s not so bad. At least you’ll have full medical and dental and an opportunity to convert to the nation of islam.

But more seriously, let freedom ring!

47. Esn | December 1st, 2011 at 5:42 pm

@calripson (#34), yeah, that’s a fair point. Let’s be honest here – very few people left the USSR/Russia 20 years ago because of “totalitarianism”…They left for greener pastures because they saw their country collapsing socially and economically, and because they didn’t know if they’d ever get another chance. You may ask how the fuck I know what I’m talking about, and you would right to do so…

But hey, questioning someone’s authenticity by means of anonymous remains a nice technique to score coolness points here in the US, so why not use it?

@The Exiled Censor, I know because my family emigrated at that time as well, going through the typical trajectory – first into Israel and then eventually into another Western country. Notice how Israel’s politics were rather leftward in the 1990s and since then have taken a sharp turn to the right? It coincides with all the Russian immigrants who came and then left. The ones who didn’t leave became the real hardcore fundamentalists.

Everyone I know emigrated because they could see the country was collapsing and emigration was an avenue of escape. Not because life in the Soviet Union was unbearable, but because they feared that it would BECOME unbearable.

Anyway, I’m muddying the narrative. Although it wasn’t the primary reason we emigrated, everyone in my family agrees that the U.S. is now looking a lot like a police state.

51. Esn | December 1st, 2011 at 9:05 pm

#49: I’ve read his book and I occasionally read his blog, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I also searched for “Selco” on a search engine and haven’t found anything.

52. Kyeshinka | December 1st, 2011 at 9:49 pm

At least the Soviets got some free shit out of their police state.

53. Rosy Luxembourgeois | December 2nd, 2011 at 1:55 am

The exiled may consider accepting Bitcoins, which can be donated anonymously.

Also to give you a bit of a hint, the moment you resist the police in any fashion you are no longer a peaceful demonstration. Even if you sit calmly and politely let them arrest you then you are not a peaceful demonstration. Peaceful demonstrations do not get arrested as was repeatedly demonstrated by the Tea Party who somehow managed to get their message out there to everyone without a single solitary arrest much less all of the other problems associated with OWS movements.

I came to totalitarian Unites States from totalitarian Russian Federation to serve in its armed forces and got myself its freaking citizenship. Three years later I can’t stand this depraved country full of lying sacks, sick of its bullshit baths and nascent fucking discrimination. Ready to leave the fuck outta here very soon!

58. Vendetta | December 5th, 2011 at 5:44 am

@55: Congress shall make no law Congress shall make no law Congress shall make no law Congress shall make no law

Comments can and will be censored at whim Comments can and will be censored at whim Comments can and will be censored at whim Comments can and will be censored at whim

1st Amendment doesn’t apply here and eXiled has always made it clear how they operate, dipshit.

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The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…